Fraud Convict Puts Expertise In Game Series

LONDON — Former millionaire and jailbird Trevor Pepperell paused the other day in demonstrating the first part of his unique autobiography -- a board game.

''There is a series of nine games which depict my own financial life,'' he said. ''They are part of my life, a re-enactment of my financial career.''

Pepperell perfected these games, with the help of the entire criminal population, at Wormwood Scrubs prison, where his high-rolling career ended with a two-year stretch.

''If I wrote a book about it, it would be this thick and nobody would read it,'' Pepperell said, opening the transparent box of his first high-finance game.

''You see, nobody really understands money. Not when the sums get really large.

''At one time I had 14 million pounds $21 million passing through one bank account in one month -- and I had 40 bank accounts. And you can't explain figures like that to people. They just go blank.

''The only way you can get them to understand is with games like this.''

Pepperell, a stocky, mustachioed man with gray hair in thick waves, began with a $20,000 loan in the 1960s and, with a partner, built a multicompany empire valued at $100 million.

It crashed in 1973. Pepperell was indicted for fraud.

''I was charged with stealing the same 5 million pounds $7.5 million three times over,'' he said. ''But of course it never existed: It was a paper sum only.

''That's the kind of thing ordinary people, like those on the jury, could never understand.''

Yet the jury found him guilty. Pepperell found himself behind bars.

''It was a golden opportunity,'' he said, peering over heavy glasses to judge this statement's effect.

''I had my games made up and brought in, and I had 500 people in prison playing these games, and playing them and playing them until they played them to bits.

''It was the best testing process you can imagine. It involved the finest criminal minds in the country, people more than bright enough to be underwriters at Lloyd's of London.''

Prisoners, he said, were quick to grasp the basis of Bottom Line, the Monopoly-style game -- the first of his series -- he was demonstrating in a London store. The further you get into debt, the sooner you can make money.

''You start with a loan, buy sets of property, get deeper into debt until you sell at a profit,'' its description says. Its smallest paper-money bill is 50,000 pounds, and its most numerous are 1 million pound bills.

Coming to the market later is ''a progression'' of increasingly difficult and complex games, Pepperell said. Each represents one more chapter in his financial autobiography.

He wants his games to educate ordinary people in the mysteries of enormous sums and the rarified financial world. Bottom Line, he said, can be played by children of 10 and older. But there's a neat twist for really serious would-be financiers.

''There are corollary games to many of the nine,'' Pepperell said. ''For instance, for this one you can buy a clip-on board which turns a nice, pleasant family game into something really vicious.

''Something to cause divorces and break up marriages.'' He seemed pleased by the prospect.

Pepperell's games -- Bottom Line costs about $27 -- are marketed through the Silver Bear Co. at 111A Westbourne Grove, London W2 4UW, England.